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August 11, 2009

Ang Lee’s Catskill Culture Clash

When half a million exuberant participants converged on Bethel, N.Y., for the legendary Woodstock Music and Art Fair 40 years ago this week, it proved a harmonious blending of two diverse populations: the young people who turned out to celebrate the festival’s ode to flower power and the older locals who largely made the festival possible in the historic Jewish mecca of the Borsht Belt.

Rivka’s Special Need

When I asked Michael Held what was “different” about Rivka Bracha Menkes, he had trouble answering. It wasn’t as severe as Down syndrome or autism or cerebral palsy, he said. It was more in the general category of “developmental disabilities,” or “special needs.”

Jerusalem 2009: A Tale of Two Cities

It is said that Jerusalem is the world’s most contested territory, holy to and jealously coveted by the three Abrahamic faiths. Jerusalem is also a city where Jews and Arabs live adjacent to, and sometimes amid, one another.

Between Destruction and Redemption

This year, the Saturday following Tisha B’Av, Shabbat Nachamu (the “Sabbath of Consolation”), was shattered by violence as a masked gunman opened fire on a crowd of teenagers gathered at the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Youth Center. This year, the close of Tu B’Av days later on Aug. 5 was marked by dozens of vigils throughout the country that mourned the victims of this senseless act of hatred and intolerance.

Service Honors Victims ofTel Aviv Attack

In the flicker of a yahrtzeit candle, congregants and community guests rose and draped their arms around each others’ shoulders. As Cantor David Berger strummed the first chords of “Oseh Shalom,” men and women began to swa

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More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.